


In Another Then

by lisabounce



Category: Immortals - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisabounce/pseuds/lisabounce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone loves some gender-swap AU.</p><p>The boy standing at the edge of Onua's camp at the horse fair in Cria, Galla was of middling height and skinny, thick, curly brown hair clubbed back at the nape of his neck, dressed in a pair of worn leggings, boots and a roughly patched green tunic. Almost two inches of bony wrist showed from his sleeves and his tunic had clearly been let down at least once. The boy carried a heavy, unstrung longbow, a quiver of arrows slung over one shoulder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Another Then

The boy standing at the edge of Onua's camp at the horse fair in Cria, Galla was of middling height and skinny, thick, curly brown hair clubbed back at the nape of his neck, dressed in a pair of worn leggings, boots and a roughly patched green tunic. Almost two inches of bony wrist showed from his sleeves and his tunic had clearly been let down at least once. The boy carried a heavy, unstrung longbow, a quiver of arrows slung over one shoulder.

He cleared his throat diffidently and ducked his head momentarily before speaking. “Excuse me – Trader Onua? I heard you was hiring. I'm -” he paused, then went on, “a fair hand with animals, all kinds.”

“Is that yours?” she asked him, pointing to the bow.

The boy nodded and gave a small, smug smile. “Of course. I'd not have the nerve to carry it, otherwise.” He slipped it off and strung it on one smooth motion before catching the string in two fingers and drawing it to his ear. “I'd put an arrow up but I'd hit someone, surely.”

“I'm impressed,” Onua said. “I couldn't draw a bow that big.”

The boy shrugged. “Nor could I at first. I keep this one limber or I still couldn't.”

“Crossbow?”

“Yes ma'am. We have-” and he paused for a moment, bit his lip. “We had bandits at home and I stood watch with the sheep so I learned crossbow, longbow and sling, not that I'm bragging.” Onua looked at the boy carefully, thinking about the slip of his tongue. Running away from a bad master perhaps or did he truly have no home?

“What's your name,” she asked, putting those concerns away for a moment and slipping two fingers into the pouch of eyebright she carried at her belt. It made her fingers itch when she called on her gift but being able to spot liars had long ago saved her life more than once.

“Dan, mum. Veldan Sarrasra.” There was no red aura surrounding the boy's face.

“How old are you, Dan?”

“Fifteen, mum.” She'd have picked that for a lie even without the eyebright. Dan's size and height put him at something closer to thirteen.

“Where are you from?”

“Snowsdale, about two weeks' walk north.” Mountain country, Onua knew.

“You're not running away, are you? From a bad master or home?” She was bound to turn an escaped bondsman over to the watch in Cria and there was always a bounty on runaway apprentices. The boy might be more trouble than he was worth.

“No mum,” his mouth tightened. “I got no family, just Cloud,” and Dan gestured to his pony. Truth, again. Onua dusted the powder from her fingers and gave a slightly less wary smile. “I'm Onua Chamtong, of the K'miri Raadeh.”

Dan looked confused. “The what?”

“The K'mir are a people to the east. Raadeh are one of their tribes.” He looked no less confused and Onua shrugged. “Never mind for now. You say you're good with animals. C'mere.” She led the boy to the pen. Inside, twenty-seven ponies milled around. “I buy horses. I had an assistant but he got offered a better job working for a horse merchant here and I wasn't about to hold him back. If you hire on – and I didn't say I'd hire you- you'll help me take these south. It's three weeks' drive - if we don't bog down in mid, if we aren't hit by raiders, and if we go before these people take the road to the next fair. It'll be just you, me and my dog Tahoi. Why don't you climb in and look them over? I want to see how you manage them.”

 

Dan stared, wide eyed as the men rode up, white cloaks and gleaming mail. The knight leading them was a short man all in golden mail who dismounted in a hurry and went to to talk to Onua. The men of the King's own, however, wasted no time in dismounting and and began to fix camp. It was clear that they'd done this a hundred times before. It was the most glorious sight he'd ever seen and Dan spent a moment or two imagining himself mail clad and riding one of their beautiful horses.

The men of the Own were used to boys dogging them in camp. For the most part, they alternated between ignoring them and occasionally flipping them coppers for work the boys would have done for free, anyway. Dan watched for a few minutes before remembering that he ought to tether his ponies' lead strings before they bothered the knights' horses and Tahoi and Cloud followed him closely, all three a little overwhemeled by the sights. One of the men, seeing him working with his own ponies, called to him once the task was done.

“Lad! Come give me a hand with our horses.” He handed Dan a curry comb and introduced him to the first horse in the line, a large bay that towered over the boy.

“Glory...” Dan whispered and set to work with a will, ignoring the jealous glares from his ponies, occasionally murmuring compliments to the horse. The rest of the men tasked with the Own's horses ignored him for the most part, talking and joking amongst themselves and throwing the odd comment toward him. Their horses, on the other hand, were not as aloof as they'd first looked and wanted to make friends, filling his ears with remarks about their riders, the tastiness of that grass just over there and how much they wanted their oats. He was settled into the work when a shout rang out from the tent Onua had showed the first knight into. “Great merciful Goddess! Of all the gods' cursed simpleminded-”

One of the men grinned at him. “The Lioness has a temper,” he said. “Sometimes it gets the better of her.”

Dan stared at him, curry comb forgotten. “That's the Lioness? She looks like a man, with her mail and all.” A runty man, now he thought about it. She was probably shorter than he was. “Don't people mind that it's not really decent, a woman riding about like that?”

He got firm glare at that and made a note not to question it again as the knight stamped out of the tent, now wearing breeches and a shirt. (Breeches! On a woman. He'd stared seeing Onua at first and started again, now. He could almost see her legs.) No longer in mail, it was easier to see that she was female. And short. And angry. “You, boy! Come here!” she yelled.

Tahoi growled and Dan bristed, himself. She might be the king's Champion but she was also rude.

The Lioness stared at the dog and then smiled. “I'm sorry, Dan,” she said, all sweetness now. “Would you please come here? I think I need your help.”

The man of the Own who'd given him the curry comb in the first place held out his hand for it in return. “Go on, lad. There'll be plenty more for you to do later.”

Dan handed the tools over and nodded. “Yessir.” He gave the horse nearest him a goodbye pat and ran over to the Lioness, already itching to be back with their gorgeous horses. Or, better, they might train later and he'd maybe have a chance to watch.

 

It was early afternoon the next day before the hawk-man got up, a tall, graceful-looking man in breeches and a shirt.

Dan was seated across from Onua, she mending leatherwork and he a hole in the heel of a sock. He hated the task but disliked blisters even more and was working at it carefully, the darn a lumpy brown imitation of the far finer work his ma had once done done on the other sock's heel. Arram, no, he remembered, Numair, spoke to Onua while Dan kept his eyes down, focussed on his work with only a few, short glances at the man. This was a real mage, not just a hedgewitch. Dan had thought he'd look more powerful, even if the Lioness hadn't.

A pair of large hands appeared in front of him, holding the sock steady as Dan knotted his strand of wool. “Thanks,” he muttered, blushing. A real mage and he was darning his socks!

“You look different,” Numair said, smiling and took the sock away from him.

“Huh?”

“You were a lot bigger,” Numair said, unpicking the darn. “Here, watch. This is how you do it so you won't get blisters.”

“It seems to me that you were a lot smaller,” Dan said, torn between being appalled at Numair and amazed that the mage would even know how to do something so... so... domestic. Numair set a dozen dozen stitches and gave the sock back, returning to his seat.

“I'd be dead if it wasn't for you, Dan.” Dan blushed again, looking back down at his sock, concentrating on filling in the hole as Numair had shown him. Glory, stories never mentioned being thanked by mages. Or that they darned socks. 

 

It had been mud all the way back from the border. Mud, mixed with late sleet and, when it hadn't been sleeting, it had been raining. Dan's boots and breeches were near invisible under their covering of mud, his tunic splattered and dirty smudges covered his face. Only his hands, bow and quiver were clean, as was the loaded crossbow resting on Cloud's packsaddle as he walked. Onua was no better and Tahoi and the ponies were filthy to their bellies. The weather had slowed them enough that they'd had to push hard to make it back on time at all. To make it worse, the ponies were all cranky, even the blue roan called Garn that Dan had already picked out as his remount.

They made the Rider headquarters well after midnight and, muttering apologies to the ponies, simply fed and turned them loose before stumbling up the hill to the baracks with their gear. When they reached the door, Onua stopped and caught Dan's shoulder, looking at him carefully. “Are you sure about this, lad? I don't want to break in another assistant.”

He nodded and gave a weary smile. “I was fifteen in January and well...” He didn't say the rest. Assistant horsemaster wasn't as glamorous as the alternatives could be. “Numair thinks I'm properly trained for now and he's got his hands full with that baby dragon still.”

Onua nodded. “We'll sort things out in the morning, then,” she said, exhausted and slowly climbed the stairs to her rooms while Dan turned and stumbled in to his own, stripping and washing quickly before tumbling into bed only to be woken all to early by Sarge's yells upstairs.

The trainees were all given the morning off as a reprieve before their work started in earnest. Dan, however, spent his morning grooming the new ponies, sorting out his final pay from Onua and moving his gear to the trunk at the foot of an unoccupied bunk in the barracks. Sarge nodded to him at one point, saying “I'm amazed you stuck to civilian life for so long, lad.”

Dan shrugged. “I wasn't fifteen yet last year, sir.”

A nod. “Buri and I are glad to have you but you'd best remember that we'll be riding hard on you. Onua's still not happy about losing her assistant.”

Dan grinned briefly. “Numair's not too happy about it, either, sir. Said something about how's he ever supposed to avoid the Carthaks properly when he heads down there with that envoy without having the excuse of training me before he went stalking off to look after that dragon of his.”

“Go on, then. You're all due down at the at horse yards soon.”

“Yes, Sarge.” 

 

Dan stared at Numair. The older man sat cross legged on his bedroll on the other side of the fire, his dragon asleep with its head on his knee. The rest of Dan's Rider group were asleep. They were nominally in friendly territory hereabouts, some five miles out from a bandit group's camp. “You raised the dead?”

He nodded tiredly. “Yes, magelet.”

“The stories about everything that happened down there are true, then?”

Numair's lips quirked in a tired smile. “That depends on what the stories are.”

“Well-” Dan shifted uncomfortably and looked over Numair, fingers drumming on the stock of his crossbow. “We were at the Rider barracks for the most part while you were with the Carthaks so we got all the news. They were saying you'd....” He blushed and looked away. “The new emperor, Kaddar. They said that you were canoodling with him and some fellow who was the head of the University and then Ozorne had you killed because he's jealous.” Spoken aloud, it sounded ludicrous. One of the Riders knew a man who knew a fellow in the scriptorium and he'd made a copy of a portrait of Kaddar that had been passed around the barracks – the boy was, even in the picture, very handsome.

Numair, at least, had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “My dear, you have to understand that I learned my lesson about 'canoodling' as you put it with royalty before you were even walking. And as for Lindhall, well, that was a long time ago.”

Dan shook his head. He didn't mention the part where he'd run south, with no plan even for getting across the Inland Sea. Besides, they'd caught up with him after eighty miles, Farant had slapped him five kinds of silly and then sat on him while Miri told him the newest news from Corus. “Anyway, the next thing we'd heard, you weren't dead after all and you'd raised the dead...”

“No. Ozorne murdered a simulacrum I made because I'd thought something like this might happen. Ozorne was always... jealous. I... lost my temper, magelet. His mages convinced me you were dead before they put the simulacrum to death. And then the Graveyard Hag came visiting and offered me a wonderful gift.” He looked sad and stared out into the night.

Dan just stared at him, wide-eyed. Later, he said, “The Badger came and visited me again, after- He said I hadn't been attending to my lessons well enough because if I had, I might have been able to do more than just convince some racehorses to take me south. He said if I tried, I'd be able to enter the minds of any animal I wanted, use their eyes or ears or noses like I would my own.”

“You came after me?”

“You were dead! They said Ozorne killed you for treason and I was going to make him pay,” Dan muttered.

“Oh, magelet. And the Badger visited you? I think you and I have some work to do.”


End file.
